


Out of the Mist

by Aftenstjerne



Series: The Mist [2]
Category: The Addams Family (Movies - Sonnenfeld)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Porn, F/M, Gay Male Character, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, Married Couple, Married Life, Mental Health Issues, Murder, The end of a bromance, Threesome - F/M/M, angsty smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:22:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28432377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aftenstjerne/pseuds/Aftenstjerne
Summary: During Gomez's annual depression Morticia fell into the arms of Gomez's best friend, Damian. Tormented by guilt and shame, she keeps their betrayal a secret, fearing how Gomez might react to her story.
Relationships: Gomez Addams/Morticia Addams
Series: The Mist [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2195481
Comments: 11
Kudos: 14





	1. A friend

**Author's Note:**

> This is the sequel to "In the Mist" so I highly suggest you read that one first if you have not done so allready. Thanks again, helloitshaley for offering your beta skills. And thank you Midnightlovestories and LittleObsessions for all your creative ideas and support. 
> 
> Midnightlovestories suggested that Damian got eaten by a giant rat before he could do any harm. That did not happen, but at least there is a rat in the story now and his name is Udolpho. He is relevant to the plot, I swear. 
> 
> Please read the tags carefully and decide for yourself if this is something you really want to read. If it is, I hope you enjoy.

The late August sun seeps through the heavy draperies, pooling on the floor, like honey and blood. He wipes the sweat away from his forehead with his cravat before he tosses it away. The weather annoys him, it is hot and humid and useless. He is supposed to tend to his businesses, but they bore him. He has more money than he can spend in a lifetime and more time on his hand than he knows what to do with. It is a privilege and yet, at the same time, a pain.

He sheds his skin like a snake, dressing like a man of the common class before he leaves the mansion to wander the streets. It is an odd habit, one that he wisely keeps to himself. They would have laughed at him if they knew it, the other gentlemen at the model train club or the Freemason lodge. He guesses they have never experienced the joys of being everyone and no one at the same time.

The road down from Cemetery Hill is long and winding and the streets empty and dull, still there is something in the air that does not have a name yet. The sizzling sound of the crickets are louder than usual and then there is this gush of wind coming out of nowhere, combing through the leaves of the tall aspen trees. They shimmer like the thighs of a vaudeville dancer, tainted by the last sunrays. The painted sky is high and violent, a baroque mash of colours. A faint smell of smoke reaches his nostrils.

When he reaches the road sign pointing down to Cemetery Lane he walks right into an angry mob. They are dressed like him, or worse, poor men filled with rage too large for their scrawny bodies.

“Down with the aristocracy!” they shout, sneering with rotten teeth and hollow cheeks, stabbing the mellow evening air with their pitchforks. He thought this was going to be a wasted evening, but now he is not so sure.

“What’s the fuss all about, son?” he asks a dirty, little boy as he runs past him.

“We are going to make them pay,” the youngster replies, panting as his wooden shoes hit the dusty sidewalk.

“Who?”

“The rich folks, Sir.”

“I’ve always hated them,” he replies, feeling the adrenaline flooding his veins, his heart beating in tune with the rhythm of rage and destruction. He inhales the sour smell of self-righteousness and unwashed shirts, grinning wildly.

This is food for his restlessness, served to him by these peasants : the rare opportunity of joining a mob on a killing spree, here in the quietest corner of New York City.

He silently thanks the providence for his choice of clothes, allowing him to blend in with the masses as more people join from the side roads. Every fibre of his being is alert, every drop of his blood aflame, as he gets ready to be a part of this haphazard killing machinery.

However, when the mob reaches the end of Cemetery Lane, he realizes that he joined in too late. The dust is already settling on the blood in the street and the bodies are carried away. The crowd is scattering like headless chickens and he knows that the ones who do not drag their asses away from the crime scene are the ones who will be caught and hanged for the deed.

He turns and starts to walk back, making sure to keep the leisurely pace of an innocent man. The smell of smoke is stronger now and there is a peculiar gleam in the horizon, which does not stem from the setting sun. He is running down his options for further entertainment, veering between the brothel and the opium den, when he hears footsteps behind him. He turns and his eyes fall upon a young man, bare headed and in his shirtsleeves. His features are noble and his eyes are large and shocked.

The cool evening wind spirals in the dust and he is almost sure now: judged by the smell, someone must have set a match factory on fire.

“Do you own anything of value located around the hill, Sir?” he says, addressing the young man staggering towards him.

“If you do, I hope you remembered to pay your insurance bill.”

“They killed my parents,” the young man says, some foreign accent thickening his voice.

“Those bastards,” he replies while he studies the stranger. If he were into men, he might have wanted to seduce him on a later occasion. He is handsome in that classic undisputable way, tall, dark and lean and the vivid pain in his eyes is nothing but becoming.

“I’m genuinely sorry for your loss. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“They killed them,” the young man repeats, gazing towards the lustrous sky above the burning factory. The strange light glistens in the tears that trickles down his smoothly shaven cheeks.

“They had not done anything to them, yet they killed them.”

The naivety in this statement would be annoying coming from most men, but he finds it charming in this one. His limited understanding of the world goes well with his beauty. And after all, ignorance is bliss.

“The bestiality of the lower classes,” he says, reaching in his vest pocket for a cigar and offering one to the other man as well “they need no reasons for their actions. It’s the consumption and the malnutrition. It eats away the little morality they have.”

 _A friend_ , he muses, as the stranger accepts the offered cigar with a shaking hand, _a friend would be a pleasant outcome of this strange evening._ He moved from England a year ago and it gets lonely at times.

“I must go back home,” the young man mutters after they have smoked in silence for a while.

“If you’ll have me excused…”

“Say no more, Sir. Do what you have to do.”

“And if you ever need anything…“ he reaches in his vest pocket again, pulling out his card this time.

“Here, take this.”

“Damian Waldorf,” the stranger reads, his name sounding ever so alluring coloured by that charming accent.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mister Waldorf. I’m Gomez Addams.” His handshake is firm and strong despite the current situation. 

“Please,” he says, smiling warmly at the young aristocrat with the strange name, “just call me Damian.”

_5 YEARS LATER_

“Did you see that, old man? Wasn’t that the most epic explosion of all history?”

Damian chuckles and pours down his Scotch while he watches Gomez slapping his thighs, beaming with glee as a schoolboy.

“Bloody hell, why did you bring dynamite to the club, you mad Castilian? You have to pay for this, you know.”

He points at the hole in the ceiling with his empty glass.

“And explain it to Sir Loevenskiold,” he adds.

“It’s worth it,” Gomez replies, leaning over the bar counter, his velvet clad shoulders still shaking with laughter.

“I blew both the Lionel and the Bachman to smithereens! Like BOOM!”

He hides his face in the crock of his elbow, almost sobbing with joy.

“How old are you, again?” Damian mocks, grinning at his companion.

“Hey there bartender, pour this mad man a drink.”

Gomez starts searching his pockets for cash, but Damian stops him with a hand to his upper arm.

“Save your nickels, son, this one is on me.”

“Put some extra ice in it,” he tells the bartender “my friend here needs to cool down.”

“Cheers, Gomez. It’s good to have you back again.”

“It’s good to _be_ back again.”

Gomez wipes his eyes with the sleeve of his smoking jacket.

“I feel like I have been raised from the dead.”

“But now that you are feeling better….” Damian begins, producing a brochure from his suitcase and unfolding it on the bar counter.

“Never felt better in my whole life,” Gomez exclaims, slamming his empty glass against the black marble, causing the ice cubes to rattle and break as they spill down on the counter.

“Excellent,” Damian replies “because I was going to invite you to come to Kenya with me.”

“Kenya?” Gomez raises his eyebrows, looking down at the brochure, which shows a picture of two grinning gentlemen posing with the head of a rhinoceros.

“That could be us two, you know.”

Damian looks at him expectantly.

“The big five, Gomez. I have always wanted to do this. And I can’t think of anyone else I rather go with than my friend the mad Castilian. Wouldn’t that leopard skin look fabulous on the wall in your library?”

“It sure would.”

Gomez studies the brochure for a moment, twirling his moustache around his finger in a contemplative manner.

“It’s just that…”

“Oh, your dear wife won’t let you go? I keep forgetting that you are a married man now.”

“It’s not that Morticia won’t let me. And I’m sure we would’ve had a great time. The hunting and the camp life and everything….”

“So what’s holding you back?”

Gomez sighs and closes the brochure, his thumb trailing over the cover picture of running wild animals.

“I can’t leave her right now for an amusement trip. Not after all I put her through. She needs me here.”

Damian does not answer but his jaws tightens in a quiet display of disappointment.

“We need each other,” Gomez adds, the seriousness in his voice closing the opportunity for further discussion.

“And do not look so sad, Damian. I will go to Kenya with you one day, I promise. But now is not the right time.”

“I understand.”

Damian folds the brochure neatly together before he puts it back in his suitcase.

“A man must make his priorities.”

“How come you never married?”

Damian leans back in his chair and lets out a mirthless laugh.

“Because I love myself too much, I guess. I’ve seen what marriage does to men. Besides, I never met the right woman. Haven’t found anything in any female that I couldn’t get at the brothel without all the extra added fuzz that comes with commitment.”

He toys with his lighter, the familiar restlessness crawling up his spine. He can curb his enthusiasm when it comes to conversations like this one.

“I hope you’ll meet someone one day.”

Gomez smiles and fiddles with the medallion he carries around his neck. Morticia’s picture is in it, Damian can tell without having to look at it. She is pretty enough, by all means, what Damian does not get is why Gomez must be so obsessed about her. He used to change his girlfriends about as often as he changed his shirts until that raven haired bitch came around and bewitched him.

“I never thought it would happen to me either. Heaven knows what I have done to deserve her.”

Damian watches with a slight feeling of nausea as his friend’s gaze turns soft and glassy.

“It’s strange how life is made out of coincidences. If poor Baz were still alive, I’d never met Morticia. Our eyes met across his grave and that was it. I instantly knew we were meant for each other.”

Damian cringes inwardly by the blatant cliché, making an effort to keep a straight face. This is after all a friendship he values deeply, in spite of their differences, or maybe because of them. It is rare that he takes so much joy in another man’s company.

“Gomez Addams, always the romantic. Do you care to join me for a cigar outside? I could use some fresh air.”

“I don’t feel like I have thanked you enough for all you did for me while I was ill.”

Damian takes a deep drag of his cigar and shakes his head.

“Do not think about it, Gomez. I did nothing more than any man would have done for his friend.”

“Don’t say that. I was two weeks behind the schedule and you cleared my desk in one night. How did you even do that?”

“Experience,” Damian says, enjoying the unbridled admiration in the younger man’s voice.

“I’ve been in this game half my life. I know how to handle things.”

“To be honest, I’m relieved that you got rid of those Cranckle & son- stacks for me. I was beginning to lose my patience with them, but it’s hard sometimes you know. My father signed that contract with them years ago and—“

“We’ve talked about this before, haven’t we?”

Damian drops his cigar on the ground, crushing it into the snow with his wingtip.

“I know what you are going to say, compadre.”

Gomez sighs and brushes some tiny flakes of ashes off his coat.

“I’m not Hector, he did not love me like a father should and thus I owe him nothing.”

“Good boy.”

“But still —“

“No buts,” Damian says, dragging his coat tighter around his broad chest.

“It’s getting cold out here. Hurry home to your lovely bride now.”

“Damian?”

“Yes?”

He turns over his shoulder as Gomez hurries after him, slipping on the icy sidewalk.

“Careful there boy, you don’t want to break any—“

His sentence is cut in half when Gomez throws his arms around him, catching him in a tight embrace.

Damian laughs awkwardly as he feels his spine crack in several different places while his friend is smothering him like a boa constrictor.

“You are the best friend I ever had, I just wanted you to know that.”

He is close, too close, his breath hot and damp against Damian’s neck, the rapid young heartbeats vibrating through his own chest awakening a tugging sensation somewhere behind his ribcage. It reminds him of being at the dentist when he is yanking at a rotten tooth after numbing his mouth with chloroform. He recognizes what this is: a declaration of love from a man who can never be anything but completely sincere. Still he is unable to rejoice in his gift for he knows nothing more of love than to confuse the concept of it with his all-consuming need to possess and to control.

And he does not like the way his heart stump is waving in the darkness beneath his breastplate— amputated, mutilated, wriggling with phantom pain.

“Now, now,” he pats Gomez’s back as there is seemingly no end to his embrace.

“Let’s not give the other gentlemen indecent ideas about us.”

“But I mean it,” Gomez says, finally letting go of him, “and I want to invite you for dinner.”

“Well, that’s always a pleasure,” Damian says, adjusting the scarf around his neck.

“I want to thank you properly. For all you have done for me– for us.”

“It was nothing, really,” Damian says, lighting himself another cigar.

“But I do accept your invitation.”


	2. Scarlet

Out of two unpleasant deeds, both of which she sooner or later has to do, Morticia chooses to start with the less humiliating one. The sun is not up yet and the streets are deathly quiet. Tiny, white crystals are floating through the air and the only sound she hears is the creaking sound of the snow under her boots. She told Gomez she would go to the market in Chinatown and look for dragon eggs. It horrifies her how easy it has become for her to lie to him. The words slipped over her tongue just as easy as her underwear slipped down her legs on the worst night of her twenty four year old life. She had fainted by sunrise and she was gone for quite a while. Still, she remembered almost everything. And what she remembers hurts just as much as what she has forgotten.

An animal he was, and nothing besides that: forcing his way through her shattering resolve until the word _no_ seemed hopelessly out of reach. And she had welcomed that animal hunger, her need to be desired, taken, consumed, screaming louder than her muted _no_.

Was she ever scared? 

She wishes that she were. Fear would have been a normal response in most women facing such a man as Damian. Fear would have justified her actions. Or, rather: the lack of action.

The moment is gone, a fractured, painful piece of her history, jutting out of her soul like a splinter of glass. She will never again be able fully to reconstruct what she really felt as she laid on the floor in her husband’s study with Damian over her. Yet she keeps asking herself the same questions over and over again.

_Did she really, for a brief moment, not give a damn whether her husband killed himself or not?_

_Would Damian have stopped if she told him to?_

_How could she stoop so low as to betray her husband in his darkest hour?_

_Why had the love they shared not been enough?_

Morticia perches on the very edge of the bench, her eyes trained on the door leading into the doctor’s office. The grandfather clock is ticking sternly in the corner, churning out crystals of time like bitter pills. She pushes her nails into the numb flesh of her palms, waiting, dreading what she has to do.

The front door opens and a gush of snow and scarlet sweeps over the worn floor tiles. Morticia lifts her face and studies the other patient: A voluptuous woman in her late thirties clad in a red evening gown. Her heavy perfume fills the room immediately, chasing away the chastity of the bleak winter morning. She does not hide what trade she is in, everything from the colour of her dress to the bold peacock feathers in her hat to the plumb swell of breasts above her daring neckline radiates an utter shamelessness that Morticia cannot help but envy. This is a woman with nothing to lose and nothing to hide. She saunters towards the bench Morticia is sitting on and drops down next to her with a tired sigh, routine written all over her powdered face. 

“Is the doctor late today?” she asks, producing a mirror from her embroidered purse.

“I don’t know,” Morticia says “I haven’t asked.”

“He’s always late,” the courtesan states, unfolding a fat stained, brown paper bag.

“At least I’ll have time for some breakfast.”

She picks up a cream filled bun from the paper bag and gives Morticia a questioning look.

“Are you hungry, my dear?”

Morticia shakes her head, her empty stomach turning by the sight of the indelicate pastry.

“No thank you.”

“You look hungry,” the other woman replies, eyeing her in a way that Morticia finds more than a little bit offending. She stares at the door to the doctor’s office silently praying for him to appear.

“Here, at least have some tea bread. Nobody wants to sleep with a skeleton.”

Morticia does not answer. It is too early for her to come up with a clever reply, besides the woman is probably right. She feels unpleasantly lightheaded and she should try to eat something to avoid herself from fainting on the examination table.

“I don’t know about you, but making love all night surely gives me an appetite,” the courtesan says, as casually as if she was commenting on the cold weather.

“Love?” Morticia says, taking a microscopic bite of her tea bread.

The word tastes bitter on her tongue, no longer belonging in her mouth any more than it does in the mouth of the woman sitting next to her. The courtesan does at least charge for her sins. She on the other hand had given herself away for nothing. She will not even begin to think of what that makes her.

“Or whatever you prefer to call it,” the other woman says, shrugging her round shoulders.

Morticia does not answer.

“You don’t look well,” she continues and Morticia wishes she would stop talking to her.

“You are very pale. I hope it’s not consumption? My friend Nana caught it last winter and it’s awful. Gnawing away on her lung sacks like a rat. Poor thing.”

She wipes the corner of her eyes with a stained handkerchief.

“And the gentlemen refuse to pay if you cough up blood all over their–“

“I’m not what you think I am,” Morticia blurts out, unable to keep quiet any longer.

“Oh,” says the woman in the scarlet gown, looking at her a second time as to readjust her impression of her.

“No, I should have guessed that. The way you are dressed and all. You look like such a good, little girl. Married, I suppose?”

Morticia feels her cheeks turning red and she fights the urge to simply get up and leave the waiting room.

“Not a good, little girl after all?”

The woman stops chewing on her cream bun and looks at her as if her betrayal was written all over her face. She knows all about the human vices, Morticia thinks, because she wades in them on a daily basis.

“That’s none of your business,” she replies, drawing her black shawl tighter across her chest.

“Of course not,” the courtesan says lightly, “but it bothers you though.”

“And,” she adds, as if it was a proper way to keep their conversation going “it’s very kind of you to make sure your husband won’t get syphilis.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“At least not from you.”

She licks the cream of her plump fingers and dries them with her handkerchief.

“My husband would never—“Morticia begins and the scarlet clad woman looks teasingly at her.

“But you did. Why? Is he old? Ugly?”

Morticia shakes her head silently, momentary made speechless by the blatant rudeness.

“Perhaps he can’t get it—“

“He was ill,” Morticia says, regretting the words as soon as they leave her mouth. She does not owe this obnoxious woman an explanation.

The courtesan stares at her without saying anything, her eyes round and hungry for a story Morticia will not give her.

“You have not told him, have you?” she says after they have been sitting in silence for a while, listening to the ticking of the clock.

“I wouldn’t do it if I were you. As long as there’s no baby on the way, what difference does it make? What he doesn’t know won’t bother him. Who knows, perhaps one day he does the same to you. And then you are even.”

“Miss Nightshade?” a male voice calls out and Morticia flinches by the sound of her maiden name, the blood rushing from her head as she raises from the bench a little bit too quickly.


	3. Udolpho

“Tish, how many l’s are there in ‘grateful’?”

“Only one, darling.”

“Thanks, querida.”

Gomez scribbles down a few more lines, bleeding his grand emotions all over the expensive writing paper.

Every now and then, he chuckles to himself, pleased she guesses, by a specific well-crafted formulation. Morticia keeps her eyes on the shawl she is knitting, shrinking underneath the weight of her husband’s enthusiasm. He writes this speech for Damian and she dreads the fact that she must listen to it twice. First, to correct his grammar and then while she sits by his side at the dinner party. The mere thought of being in the same room as Damian again makes her sick to her stomach.

“Tish, listen to this!”

He pushes his chair away from the table, the legs screeching against the floor of the parlour.

 _“_ What do you think works best _? As I walked through the valley of the Shadow of Death you helped me steer my sinking ship out of the muddy water?_ Or: _As I twirled in the maelstrom of sadness and despair you helped me steer my sinking ship out of the muddy water?”_

She forces herself to smile when his eyes meet hers.

“I’m not sure, mon cher, maybe you should stick to the maritime imagery?”

“I agree,” he says, “I liked the last one best myself.”

“Care to hear the rest?”

“Later, darling,” she replies, suddenly unable to hear another word of his speech.

“I need to go and feed Udolpho.”

The giant rat lives by the bottomless sea in the crypt underneath the mansion. He used to be a wild animal, a mutant lurching around in the underground, minding his own business there. However, after Morticia started to spend more time in the crypt he has begun to eat from her hand.

“That little rascal is almost like a dog now, or what?” Gomez smiles, pulling her into his arms as she raises from her chair.

“Almost.”

He cups her chin and tilts it gently upwards, examining the dark pools of her eyes as if he is looking for the answer to an unspoken question.

It takes all of her strength not to flinch or look away. She manages to keep a straight face although she feels like her heart is about to claw its way out of her chest, screaming for him to see what she is hiding and take the burden of her secret from her.

She cannot take it anymore. She cannot live like this.

“Cara mia, are you alright?”

And yet she can.

“Of course,” she smiles, hoping that she sounds convincing.

Buying time, that is what she does. Telling lies and buying time.

“Are you sure?”

Oh, how he paves the road to her confession for her, nudging her towards it without ever demanding her to tell him the truth. He is not dumb, her husband, he knows very well that something is not right. One of these days, he might lose his patience and force her to speak and a part of her looks forward to that day. Because she cannot seem to ever find the strength to do so by herself.

But for now, he does nothing but watch her, quiet and solemn, a knowing look in his eyes, yet he knows nothing at all. It goes, she reckons, far beyond his imagination. Even his worst nightmares, and she knows that he has them, cannot prepare him for the truth of her betrayal.

She answers his question with a simple nod and his hand moves from her chin to her hair, tucking it slowly behind her ear. Goosebumps spread across her skin, awakening the need to be with him in a way she has not been able to after the incident. That is what she calls her encounter with Damian in her endless inner monologues: _the incident_. It is neutral enough to be tangible, yet she knows she must be more specific when she finally confesses.

She has started to rehearse; it is there, half written in her mind, chiselled out by that churning wheel of thoughts, that horrible never resting wheel.

Still, she searches her vocabulary for kinder, less crude words, words that would hurt him less and make her less ashamed. The words that simmers in the dark water of her consciousness are too ugly and too painful to ever fall from her lips.

He leans down and kisses her brow and she closes her eyes, swaying under the warmth of his mouth and hands, which caresses the small of her back.

“You are so quiet,” he whispers, and to that implied question, of course, there exists no answer.

“You know you can share everything with me, don’t you?”

“Oui.”

Her voice is hoarse, yet she manages to rein in her feelings and serve him another pale crescent moon smile.

Her lips are bare, unpainted, and he kisses them quickly and chastely, a school boy’s kiss.

He is becoming insecure around her and it pains her to see it.

“The carcass is in the pantry, right?”

He blinks a couple of times, looking puzzled as if unable to derive any meaning from her simple question. It is redundant as well as mundane, she knows very well where the dead fox is, and he knows that she knows it too.

“Yes,” he replies, giving her one last long look before letting go of her.

“Udolpho!” 

Her cry is low and haunting, summoning a beast unknown to the world above ground.

Silence.

The surface of the bottomless sea remains dull and quiet as Morticia settles at the bank, the dead fox dangling over the sharp angle of her shoulder. She lowers it to the ground before calling the rat’s name again, dragging out each syllable.

“U-dolp-ho!”

Her voice echoes against the walls of the crypt, causing myriads of tiny stones to come rattling down.

This time her cry is answered by waves, lapping gently at the shore, wetting the leather of her tightly laced boots. A few seconds later, a head appears from the darkness, about the size of a moose’s head. The giant rat swims towards her, beckoned by the familiar voice and the smell of meat.

Udolpho waddles out of the water on colourless feat that seem far too small for his mutant body. Then he sneezes and shakes his wet fur, his tail trailing in the sand behind him like a fat snake. He inhales the dank air with a wheezing sound, trying to localize the food. He is already salivating, as he has learned to connect the soft female voice with the taste of blood and raw flesh. The smell of death drifts towards him, filling his senses with the joy of chewing and swallowing, yet his nostrils catch something else too, something he does not like.

_The unsettling smell of a wounded animal._

And it comes from her, the killer and food bringer — it must— because there are no other living creatures in the crypt.

Although she is a strange species and most definitely nothing remotely close to a rat, he has come to regard her as part of his tribe. He is blind, born and raised in utter darkness, and he locates her solely by her scent.

Her body is close to the ground in a position of defeat. He sniffs all over her bended form, searching for the wound, but he cannot find it. Then he presses his snout against her open palm, ruminating the corners of his rat mind, trying to understand the reason why she is suffering.

Has her mate abandoned her? He knows that she used to have one, a loud male who smelled like burned wood. She brought him with her to the crypt sometimes, but lately she has visited him alone. Udolpho whimpers against her cold skin, showing his concern the only way he can. The female rests her head against the broad space between his eyes and then she sheds something in his fur, something wet that tickles him.

Blood?

No, it tastes almost like his sea, but salty. He laps it up from the smooth surface of her face only to be granted with more of the strange liquid. She might be dying, he thinks, due to the way her wounded body just keeps leaking and there is —alas— nothing he can do. Although he is enormous, he is still just a rat.

If she dies, right here on the bank of his sea, he will most likely eat her. He will lick her bones clean and think of her with gratitude, because she has been kind to him. No other creature has ever been kind to him before. Not even his own mother who chased him away when he started to grow out of proportions.

Eventually, she rises from the ground, leaving him to feast upon the meat she has brought him. His sharp teeth tear through the sinews and bones of the dead fox and his senses are filled with the pure satisfaction of consuming raw flesh.

The wounded female stays with him until he is done with his meal and she does not die. Instead, she scratches the lonely place behind his ear with her long talons, making him wiggle his tale with joy.

If she has enemies, if that is what bothers her, he thinks to himself as he purrs beneath her touch, he will be more than happy to kill them for her.


	4. Damian and Cordelia

The steel springs in the mattress of the monstrous four poster bed are crying and sighing in tune with the Rubensesque woman moving over him. Although she is his regular choice and familiar with most of his preferences, tonight Damian finds himself unable to get the satisfaction he has paid for.

The chase for it is starting to become unpleasant. The crumpled sheet itches against his back and buttocks and the courtesan’s body odour, a mixture of hot-fucked pussy and heavy perfume suddenly make him want to gag.

“Get off me,” he grumbles, and the woman obeys without further discussion. She motions to grip his melting erection with a ring-studded hand, but he stops her mid-air.

“Leave it be,” he sighs tiredly, “I’m not getting there tonight. “

“Oh, but I never leave my clients unsatisfied,” the woman protests, her wet tongue trailing the protruding humps of his pectoral muscles “it’s bad for business.”

“I tell you what’s bad for business, Cordelia, and that is being ignorant of what your customer has to say. If I’m telling you it’s not working for me, it means _that it’s not working for me_.”

He searches the nightstand for his lighter before turning back to the woman who lies naked by his side, glaring at his private parts. 

“And stop staring at my cock like you never seen it before. It’s not going to help,” he barks, tearing the sheet of the bed with a brusque movement before wrapping it around his waist.

“Alright, Mister Waldorf, no need to be angry with me, the courtesan named Cordelia replies as she moves to lie on her belly.

“I’m only here to please.”

Damian lights his cigar before laying down on the mattress with a groan, tucking his arm under his head. Cordelia places herself in the crook of his free arm, wrapping it around her. She snuggles next to him, tracing lazy patterns on his chest as if it were the only right response to her lover’s hostility.

He smokes in silence for a while and the courtesan keeps sliding her fingers across the slick skin of his torso.

It annoys him.

“Stop doing that,” he murmurs, his voice muffled by his cigar.

“Doing what?”

“Petting me like I was a cat or something. It tickles.”

“I could scratch you, if you’d prefer that,” she offers in a singsong-voice, digging her nails into his flushed skin.

“I rather wish you stopped touching me all together.”

“It’s in your package, though. Aftercare. _Womanly affection.”_

There is a slight hint of mockery in Cordelia’s voice now and the way she frowns makes her look both older and colder.

 _“_ I’m only trying to give you what you’ve paid for.”

“You’re going to give me a rash with that affection of yours, so please just stop.”

She lets out a loud sigh, letting her plump palm rest flat against his skin.

Silence falls upon them once again, filling the gaping void that exists between people who will never exchange anything else of value besides body fluids and cold cash.

“There must be someone on your mind,” Cordelia says suddenly, speaking with that annoying sincerity she always puts on display when sticking her nose into other people’s business.

“Someone special. What’s her name?”

Damian does not answer, nor does he look at her. He focuses solely on his smoking as if the task of inhaling and exhaling required all his mental capacity. Cordelia is right, there is someone occupying his thoughts, one who does so in a way that he is neither familiar nor comfortable with. It is not in his nature to orbit around other human beings, or to long for more than they are willing to give him. He has always regarded neediness as a weakness reserved for women and children. The world is full of people one can use to satisfy one’s needs. All of them are interchangeable. Some needs are easy to fill, like the need for a decent fuck or a drinking companion. Other needs are harder to meet like the need for intelligent conversation or a trustworthy business partner. Yet those who seek shall find and Damian has a nose for people who can fill the empty slots in his well-organized life. If they become troublesome in any way or if they simply start to bore him as people often do, he moves on and replaces them.

Never before has he suffered bereavement beyond a brief feeling of annoyance and disappointment when people disappear from his life without warning or cease to fulfil the role he has given them. The funny thing is that the man who occupies his thoughts, his friend the mad Castilian, is still very much a part of his life. Furthermore, he has never given him any reason to doubt his loyalty or his devotion to their friendship, and still, ridiculous as it might seem, Damian cannot shake the feeling that his only real friend is drifting away from him. And Gomez Addams, in contrast to all other men, is irreplaceable.

When Gomez called him after his cousin’s funeral and told him he would marry a woman he met there, Damian took it as a joke. He saw the two of them as made from the same mould, drinking and whoring their way through life, while running their businesses and enjoying the unlimited freedom that follows being born into aristocracy. Gomez was too pretty for his own good, an easy victim for lovesick women, leaving a trail of broken hearts and ripped panties wherever he went. That one time that Damian took him to the brothel; the girls had fought each other over him and offered their services for free. Women loved Gomez and he loved them, a new one every week, and they used to laugh about it.

In each other, they had something much more important than their affairs with women: the companionship between true gentlemen who shared the same insatiable appetite for life. Their ways had crossed when Gomez needed it the most, the night he became an orphan and the ruler of a business empire at the same time. Damian had taken him under his wing and shared with him his vast knowledge of how to navigate in the realm of Mercur. Under his tutelage the young man’s businesses had flourished. The shadow of the grim unloving father had faded through the years as Gomez learned how to trust himself and his own decisions. Damian would burst with pride every time he saw a trace of cynicism hardening the sensitive look on his friend’s face as he read through a contract or shook hands with a business partner. A few more years under his guidance, and the man would transform into a real shark.

Through the years, Damian had taken great delight in corrupting his young friend’s heart. But now, he felt an even stronger urge to protect it. Whatever that woman he had married was, she was not good for him. Gomez claimed she was a witch and Damian believed him because she had indeed bewitched him. He knew his friend and his delicate health situation very well; he knew what he needed after his yearly plunge into despair: A few weeks away from the bleak New York winter so that he could fully recover under the African sun. The heat and the simplicity of camp life would do him good, but unfortunately, that controlling little cunt would not let her husband off her leash. The Gomez Addams he used to know would never say no to a new adventure. He did immediately understand that the poor chap was no longer the master in his own home, feeble excuses set aside. Damian has never let a woman dictate his actions before and neither has Gomez.

Damian is so engrossed in his own thoughts that he startles when the courtesan speaks to him again.

“Damian?”

“What now?”

“You don’t have anything to eat in here, do you?”

“Hell no, why should I have that? What kind of men store food in their bedrooms? I have brandy and a box of cigars and that’s it.”

“That’s a pity. I have this really bad craving for something sweet. Like an apple or a caramel…”

He rubs his eyes with the back of his hand, feeling an increasing urge to be alone.

“Holy Christ, Cordelia, sometimes I really do wonder why I keep putting up with you. You are rude and annoying and nosey, and you never shut up unless someone shoves a cock or a candy bar into your mouth.”

The courtesan pouts and ruffles his chestnut curls.

“Don’t be so grumpy, Damie-boy, poor me a glass of your brandy.”

He rolls over on the side with a grunt, turning his back to her.

“Do it yourself.”

She lifts the almost empty bottle from the nightstand, gulping the remains down as if it was water.

Then she flops back on the mattress, letting out a hearty burp.

“Woman, where are your manners,” Damian scolds, “if only Nana hadn’t turned into a blood coughing wretch, I would have had her over instead of you. She used to be such a nice and decent little whore.”

He turns over to look at Cordelia again.

“Nothing like you,” he says, disdain written in every line of his face “nothing like you at all.”

He watches with delight as her usual devil-may-care expression washes off her face, giving room for something vile and wounded.

“Don’t you dare talk about Nana like that,” she almost spits at him “don’t you dare.”

Her blue eyes turn cloudy with tears and she looks away.

“Oh, but I loved her,” Damian exclaims, “until that day when she sneezed her red curse all over my favourite shirt. She was terribly sorry of course, but that didn’t help. It wouldn’t wash off. The staff tried but they had to give up. Pulmonary blood, it sticks like molasses.”

He leans over Cordelia’s body, grabbing the bottle of brandy from the nightstand.

“Hey, why didn’t you save a little sip for me?”

“Nana was a living, breathing human being…” she replies, her voice barely audible, strained by anger and disbelief.

“And that was my favourite shirt,” Damian replies, “Egyptian cotton. A gift from a friend of mine. Such a pity I had to throw it away.”

He observes the tears trickling down Cordelia’s flushed cheeks with a blank expression on his face.

“Wait, what do you mean by ‘was’?” he asks, grabbing another cigar from his nightstand.

“Nana is dead, Damian.”

“Oh.”

He taps his cigar lightly against his monogrammed ashtray.

“When did that happen?”

“Five days ago. Her body is still at the morgue.”

Cordelia sits in silence for a while, letting the tears dry on her face.

“I better get dressed,” she finally says in a flat voice.

Damian watches as she dresses, closing the amusement park for the night, so to speak. It does not matter to him. She does not amuse him anymore and he cannot remember why she ever did so in the first place. However, the time for his friend’s dinner party is drawing near and when Gomez throws a party there are going to be ballroom dances for sure. He needs to bring a date and Cordelia will have to do.

“Give me a hand with my corset, will you?”

She turns her back to him, straight and rigid; the laces of her scarlet dress crisscrossing over the pale skin like whip marks.

“Of course, my darling” he replies sardonically, “when you ask me so nicely.”

She grips the nearest bed poster, and he tugs at the laces, forcing her generous waist into shape.

“By the way, Cordelia,” he says as he ties the laces together at the small of her back “do you happen to be open for business this Saturday?”

“I’m done doing business with you.”

“Don’t say that my dear, don’t say that. At least let me tell you what the deal is before you make up your mind. It’s going to be easy money, I promise you.”

She turns to face him, arms crossed over her corseted bosom.

“Alright, I’m listening.”

“I need a date for a dinner party. You’ll sit by my side at the table and join me on the dancefloor. There will be plenty of free food and you can keep your clothes on all night. What do you say? I’ll pay you twice your usual rate.”

“You know that she was like a sister to me.”

The venom is gone from her voice, replaced by a sadness that could cut through bones, yet it easily slides off the polished surface of Damian’s crippled heart.

“Make it triple then. And I’ll give Nana a proper funeral as well. We’re talking cherry wood casket carried through the streets by six black horses and a band of wailing ladies trailing behind the equipage. There’ll be a violin player at the burial site and flowers everywhere. I’ll make them ring the bells from St. Patrick’s too. She’ll go down like a queen.”

Cordelia studies her nails, feigning to be unimpressed; yet Damian is already grinning. He has done his share of bargaining with her before and he is sure that she is about to give in. After all, he has given her an offer she cannot refuse.

“Okay,” Cordelia says, and Damian laughs triumphantly as she reaches out her glove- clad hand, “we have a deal.”


	5. The Paper Dragon

Damian pulls out his pocket watch and stares at the gold gilded item in his hand with an inpatient expression on his face. His tea is left cold and untouched on the bar counter and the chair next to him is empty. The gentlemen keep entering the club, filling the room with cigar smoke and murmuring voices.

_How unlike him to be late._

“Excuse me, is there a Mister Waldorf in here?”

A young boy enters the room with a box tucked under his arm and Damian raises his hand.

“Over here, lad.”

“A message for you, Sir. From Mister Addams.”

The boy removes the box lid with an elegant move, as if he is serving him a fancy dish instead of bad news. Damian sighs and picks up the card that rests on a tiny velvet pillow. He recognizes Gomez’s trademark scrawl immediately and the rough pads of his fingers trails over the ink in a movement so uncharacteristically gentle that it can only be described as a caress.

_Dear friend_ , he reads, _I’m sorry I can’t come to the club tonight, Morticia and I are going to the ballet. Have fun and I’ll see you on Saturday._

_Sincerely, Gomez Addams_

His mind darkens as he crumbles the card in his fist.

Monday evenings are model train time, a lovely little routine they have shared for as long as they have known each other. Damian is not a man of many routines, but the few he has are sacred to him. The only acceptable reasons for them to stay away from the train club are being tormented with severe fits of melancholia (Gomez) or being too hungover (Damian) to show up.

Gomez has, as far as Damian knows, never been a fan of ballet before. Nor has he been prone to last minutes cancellations. Clearly, the witch is to blame. By tampering with the sanctity of their shared routines, she is trying to mark her territory, claiming Gomez as hers, and hers alone.

And it will not stop there, he realizes. Surely, the harlot will get pregnant sooner or later and it will all go downhill from there. Instead of riding horses through the savanna of Kenya, they will ride carousels at Coney Island with a tiny brat who will call him Uncle Damian and throw up on his shoes.

If he only knew where things were going back in November, he would have wrung the witch’s pale neck once he had the chance. Fucked her and then killed her or the other way around, it does not really matter, the important thing was that she should have been dead by now. It would have been the easiest thing, getting rid of her while Gomez was busy mourning his lost brother. He could have told his friend she fled into the mist, scared away by his illness. He would have believed him. Had he not droned on and on about how he was unworthy of a woman like her, how unbelievable it was that she had chosen him above other men? The poor fellow was simply waiting for his wife to be gone.

And gone she will be, Damian swears to himself, once he can figure out a clever way to make her disappear.

On Wednesday afternoon he dozes off in the opium den, drifting away with the mad paper dragon grinning and dancing above his head. His drugged mind drags its tentacles through the mud of his subconsciousness, conjuring the memories of a night he has chosen to forget: The night of the widowed duchess.

It was way past midnight, the party in the late duke’s mansion had been going on for hours and he and Gomez were more than just a little inebriated.

They had moved the chaise lounges so close together as they could to be able to hear each other over the clamour of the party. There was a gramophone somewhere playing Wagner and the air smelled sweetly of burnt opium. Between them was a small round table where they kept their drinks and every now and then when they reached for their glasses their hands would touch. The young Castilian looked charmingly dishevelled, his gaze soft and out of focus, his shirt unbuttoned halfway down, dark hair curling against the sculpted panes of his chest.

“Watch this, amigo,” Damian slurred every time he placed a lump of sugar on top of his ornate silver spoon, setting it aflame.

His friend giggled in return as if being told a mildly amusing joke, and then they both would watch the sugar sizzle on the spoon and drip into the green liquid, an atmosphere of absolute contentment filling the space between them.

“Look!” Gomez whisper-shouted, his eyes growing wide with sudden wonder “the green fairy!”

Damian turned his head slowly towards where his friend was pointing, not too pleased with the sudden disturbance. But the woman floating towards them was certainly no fairy although being rather petite and dressed in a green gown. It was the duchess herself, still in half mourning judged by the elaborate jet necklace around her ageing neck.

“Hey there boys!” she rasped at them, no less intoxicated than they were, “I want to ask you kids something.”

“Go ahead,” Damian replied, while Gomez just stared at her, mesmerized with his mouth agape, as if he really believed she were a spirit emerged from Damian’s glass of absinthe.

“Tell me,” the duchess slurred, wriggling her hips as she moved into the narrow space between the chaise lounges, “do the two of you find me attractive?”

She twisted and turned her body in front of them, the flame still flickering above the silver spoon,

reflecting itself in the shiny fabric of her satin gown.

“And by attractive—” she continued, moving closer to the table “I mean delectable. Desirable. _Fuckable._ ”

She reached out and grabbed Gomez’s jaw, giving it a firm squeeze that made his lips pucker out in a funny looking way before closing his mouth for him.

“Do you?”

Gomez simply stared at her with those half-lidded dark eyes that had made uncountable woman go mushy and moist for him and the duchess grinned wildly, revealing a shining row of false looking teeth.

“What kind of man would say no to this, hm?”

Her hands tugged at her decolletage as she leaned against the table dangerously close to the burning silver spoon.

“Woah, careful there, lady,” Damian warned, removing his drink from the table right before the flame touched the fabric of the duchess’ gown.

“You might want to calm down just a tiny bit…” he continued, but the duchess cut him off.

“Don’t you dare tell me what to do, boy,” she chastised, waving a pointed finger a mere inch from his face.

Damian could smell the strong scent of liquor on her breath and for a moment he wished that he had let her catch fire. Surely, she would have burned like dry wood. It would have been a spectacular sight, watching her go up in flames.

“Tell me now and be honest,” the duchess continued as she hauled her naked breasts out of her torn neckline “if these two perky puppies haven’t stood the test of time.”

The two friends stared in silence at the revelation of a pair of exceptionally fine looking fifty-year-old tits.

“Indeed,” Damian said, giving the well-shaped lumps of flesh referred to as “puppies” a nod of approval.

“Or what do you say, Gomez? She doesn’t look a day over twenty-five, huh?”

“Yes,” Gomez rasped, his eyes fixated on the woman’s breasts, drooping and dangling over his chest as she leaned down. “I mean no,” he corrected himself as the duchess’ tongue darted out of her mouth, licking her thin lips. He cried out as she groped the visible bulge in his pants, grinning like a harpy.

“This,” she hissed, tightening her claw- like hand around his erection “is exactly the kind of proof I was looking for. All these years” she sighed as the young man squirmed underneath her touch, “all those wasted years wondering if it was something wrong with me when it was him all the time. The cock-sucking, man- loving little faggot.”

“Who?” Damian asked, slightly amused by her filthy mouth.

“Well, the duke of course,” the duchess replied, “may he rot alone in his grave. I will never spend another minute by his side. Dead or alive. Now you two must come with me.”

She grabbed Damian’s cravat with her left hand, yanking his head up from the chaise lounge while she kept on fondling Gomez with her right.

“I need dick. And plenty of it.”

Damian and Gomez treated the duchess exactly like she wanted to be treated: as a piece of fine meat for them to bite and lick and pound on as she lied outstretched between their hands and bodies, screaming obscenities towards the cherubs and seraphs on the ceiling of her bedroom.

All three of them so gloriously marinated in alcohol, so entirely dedicated to the fervent chase of carnal pleasures that nothing else exists, all three of them with their eyes firmly shut until Damian opens his eyes and _sees_.

And what he sees can never be unseen again. It is Gomez in all his splendour that catches his gaze.

Gomez on the height of his youth, immortal and immoral, his lean and god-like body turned into an eternal fucking machine. Minute after minute, he thrusts dutifully in and out of the duchess, the red tip of his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth in a display of utter concentration while she cries for him to do her _harder, faster, deeper._ Damian studies him as one studies a piece of exquisite art, in silence and with awe.

_His slightly creased forehead and twisted mouth beneath that dainty pencil moustache. The way his fine dark lashes are tangled together, the shadows underneath his eyes, the light stubble on his jaw, the way his taut olive skin covers the bulges of his biceps and the protruding veins on his underarms. The white in his knuckles as he clenches the crumpled sheet in his fists. The fine sheen of sweat on his toned chest, the way the muscles in his stomach tighten like ropes as he moves his hips in tune with the shrieking of that awful female creature._

Then Damian’s eyes travel further south to linger on the most divine cock he has ever seen, a rock-hard rod, a solid handful, glistening with the wetness that—very much like a miracle—keeps pouring from that old hag.

The image of the young man’s body burns into his retina, a picture he will carry with him forever, a secret treasure he will store in the crypt of his soul together with the rest of his darkest desires. Because it strikes him with a certain clarity, the same moment he acknowledges what it is that he wants, that what he longs for never will be given to him.

At least never freely, and for once he cannot get what he truly desires by using force or bribing or manipulation. He knows very little of these things, yet he is sure that it does not work that way.

His entire body trembles with lust as he witnesses his friend reaching his climax between the duchess’s scrawny legs. The way he groans and shudders sends jolts of pure delight through his lower regions, making his cock twitch and weep with frustration.

They smoke together in silence, filling the void of Gomez’s refractory period with their shared mundane habit, although it is nothing mundane with the moment in Damian’s opinion. How could he let half his life go by, he wonders, inhaling and exhaling with short uneven breaths, not knowing what he searched for, what he missed, only knowing that he was lacking something. And here it is, right in front of his eyes, in the shape of a young male, served to him by the unknown forces that hold this wicked world together.

Yet the gods must hate him, because there is no way in hell that his friend is feeling the same way that Damian does right now. If he did, he would have known it, because Gomez would not have been able to hide that kind of emotion, even if he wanted to. When consumed by passion, he reads like an open book.

The duchess lies splayed on the bed, panting like a marathon runner. Her mourning necklace is still on and the black beads twinkle like evil eyes in the yellow lamp light. Then she reaches for them again, mewling like a crazy old she-cat, insatiable after years of neglect. Never has her marital bed been witness to such a display of pure hedonistic joy and all she wants is more and more and then some.

Once again, she voices her desires in the blatant ways of a street girl, her manners and breeding left somewhere else, in the pockets of her expensive gown, perhaps. Being her true self, she is nothing but a whore, like all women, begging to be filled and used and satisfied.

Yet her whish —or to be more specific— her command, makes Damian’s heart race in an almost inhuman way while his newfound desire rattles like a snake through his groin. She wants them as a team, tied together by her body like draft horses, working in the same rhythm, the same pace, until she comes apart around them. And they better not stop until she does, she warns them.

Damian avoids meeting his friend’s eyes as they prepare for the task ahead, soaking what needs to be soaked with the content of a bottle that the duchess handles them. When all three of them are glistening with oil, she pushes Gomez back on the bed before crawling on top of him. She moans with satisfaction as he enters her again, and jealousy tugs at Damian’s guts. He fights his urgent desire to throw the woman off the bed as her body swallows what should be reserved for him. Instead, he kneels on the bed, placing his knees on each side of his friend’s thigh before shoving himself up the woman’s ass with an unnecessary hard thrust. The duchess lets out a surprised yelp of pain, and he enjoys it.

“Please, be careful,” she gasps, and Damian cannot do anything else than follow her instruction, as he finds himself left with little room for any movement at all. The three of them establish a painfully slow rhythm together as they start moving in unison. The creature shaped by their entwined limbs looks like a vision from a Bosch painting: a monstrous starfish of lust and flesh and bones.

Sliding on the silk sheet, Damian gets overwhelmed by the sudden intimate contact with his friend as they clash against each other, separated only by a thin wall of tissue. The sensation of the other man’s cock pushing against his own feels so sinfully perfect, and he must pinch the skin on the inside of his thigh as hard as he can to avoid the embarrassment of finishing first. He searches desperately for something neutral to lay his eyes on. The duchess’ body disgusts him and his friend’s face is too achingly beautiful for him to watch right now. He tilts his head back, training his eyes on the painted sky in the ceiling where the angels glare at him, disdain written all over their plump faces. There is no mercy in the faux heaven above his head and there is indeed no mercy any other damned place either, Damian thinks, as white dots start to dance before his vision. He comes, hard and involuntary with a roar of frustration, bending double as he buries his load deep inside the duchess’ body. The other man’s name burns against his palate like bile, the bitter taste of a need that must stay muted forever.

Damian is yanked out of his dream-like state by the snickering sound of laughing children. It is Mister Liu’s awful offspring, peeking at him through the bamboo curtain, their narrow eyes and bone white teeth gleaming in the dimness of the opium den. He curses and throws his shoe at them. They cry out with equal amounts of fear and joy as they run away on their dirty feet.

The paper dragon is lit, the many coloured body shivers in the draft from the open window. He sits up, resting his head in his hands until the room stops spinning.

The night is cold and starless and the road from Chinatown to Cemetery Hill has never been longer. While he walks, Damian’s mind keeps travelling back in time, recalling the events following the duchess’ party.

The morning after the Dionysian threesome, Damian woke up in his own bed having no idea about how he had managed to get back home. He searched his nightstand for his pocket watch and when he could not find it, he looked at the stripes of light flickering across his bedroom wall and estimated the time of day to be around noon. He got up, took a leak and poured himself a glass of water before returning to bed, planning to sleep until dinner time. By then he hoped the aftermath of the last night’s revelation would be nothing but a faint memory. He swore to himself that he would be more careful with the absinthe from now one. Wormwood did the strangest things to one’s senses.

He was about to pull the duvet over his head when a servant knocked on his door with a message from Gomez. In the same hastily written sentence, his friend apologized for disturbing his rest and pleaded for Damian to meet him down at the coffee shop as soon as he could make it.

Gomez sat slumped over a table in the corner, cradling a mug with piping hot coffee. He had not bothered to pomade his hair and that was usually not a good sign. Damian sighed inwardly. He was not in the mood for any type of drama right now, the only thing he really wanted was to go back home again as quickly as possible and get some more sleep. Gomez looked like he could need to do the same. He did not look up or give any sign that he had seen that his friend had arrived when Damian sat down by the opposite side of the table.

“Hungover?” Damian asked as he lit himself a cigar.

“What happened?” Gomez whispered, still not looking at Damian.

“What happened last night, can you tell me that, please?”

He finally lifted his head, looking directly at him, his dark eyes brim-full with unshed tears. And then it happened again, the veil lifted, and all Damian could feel was his burning need to be with Gomez, to own him, to consume him, to have him crawl underneath his skin and become a part of him so that he never ever would have to be alone again.

If Damian could speak of his longing he would, but he had no access to such a language, no idea of how to convey his innermost needs. The greed was too vast, the hunger too much even for Damian who knew no limits or any shame when it came to desires in general. He lived by no other moral other than that he always strived to give himself whatever he yearned for at the moment. And he did not know fear until faced with the worst of them all, the fear he reckoned must be the mother of all fears: the one of rejection.

“Nothing,” he answered, ignoring his heart stump, which kicked him furiously in the ribs like a child throwing a tantrum.

“Nothing worth mentioning. I dare say it was a rather dull affair.”

“Then why did I wake up naked next to a woman old enough to be my mother?” Gomez replied, his upset voice turning a couple of curious heads in their direction.

“Some questions,” Damian said, “are better left unanswered.”

“How the hell did I wind up like this?”

Gomez shook his head and blinked, streaks of tears running down his pale cheeks. 

“Look Gomez, what is done is done. And you’re only twenty-six years old, you’re allowed to have some fun.”

“Fun?” Gomez snapped, looking almost angrily at Damian, “I see nothing fun with this lifestyle, I don’t think I ever did. Dress up and go out every damned weekend only to drink myself senseless and throw myself in the arms of some random woman. And they are all the same, Damian, all of them. They only want me for my body or my money and I…”

“Horrible fate, isn’t it?” Damian replied, feeling an absurd urge to reach in his pocket for his handkerchief so that he could dry his friend’s tears with it.

“What?” Gomez sniffled.

“To be young, rich and handsome. It should be forbidden by the governor.”

“Ay, mi querido amigo, you don’t understand!”

Gomez ran his fingers through his messy hair with a frustrated moan.

“What other life is there for me than the one I have chosen? No sane woman from a decent family would want to marry me. Her father would forbid it. Her brothers would duel me.”

“So?” Damian replied, leaning back in his chair “You would most likely win. New York has never seen a better swordsman than you. To duel you would be the last thing the poor bastards did.”

“Your coffee is getting cold,” he added when Gomez did not answer.

“Here, you can have it.”

Gomez shoved the mug across the table with a glum look on his face.

“There was a time,” he said, a familiar wistfulness seeping into his voice, “when I believed that life could be more than this. That somewhere out there, someone special would be waiting for me. Someone who would look at me and see,—” he paused to dry his eyes with his shirtsleeve, suddenly looking much younger than twenty-six.

“See what?” Damian replied, not entirely sure why he wanted to keep the conversation going. His head had started to ache, and he could have killed for a jar of aspirin.

“See me as better than I am,” Gomez whispered, so low that Damian had to lean across the table to catch what he was saying.

“See the man I could be, not only the man everybody thinks I am,—”

“You mean the vengeful brother, the law school dropout, the bloody Lothario?” Damian said, rubbing his temples.

Gomez let out a theatrical sigh, revelling once again, Damian thought, in his self-loathing. A flash of irritation ran through his guts.

“How many times have I told you this? You must start to own these things, my friend. Then no one can use them against you. Embrace your inner cad, that’s my best advice.”

He took a long sip of Gomez’s coffee.

“Which you never seem to take,” he added.

“I used to hope,” Gomez continued, ignoring the fact that Damian was beginning to lose patience with him “that she would find me. And when she did, everything would change. I would change. She would look inside my soul and find—" (here he paused to dry his tears again while Damian rolled his eyes at the pathos in his voice)”—whatever there’s left in me that is worth loving.”

“Granny, why is that man crying?”

A fashionably dressed little boy with chocolate smeared all over his cheeks pointed at Gomez who now lied sobbing over the corner table.

“Maximillian, don’t point at the gentleman, it’s rude.”

Maximillian’s grandmother looked sternly at the boy.

“And use your spoon when you eat, unless you want Granny to take away that chocolate cake,” she added before leaning towards her friend, another elderly lady.

“Now, isn’t that Eudora’s son making a scene over there in the corner?”

“You’re absolutely right, it’s him,” the lady answered, peering at Gomez through her lorgnette. “The poor child. I wonder if he’s still a patient at the Asylum.”

“Looks like he needs to get back into the straight jacket,” Maximillian’s grandmother muttered, spitting in her napkin before fiercely rubbing her grandson’s cheeks with it. “A grown man, making such a racket, —Maximillian, stop staring at him, I said!”

Damian turned and looked coldly at the two ladies who suddenly got busy picking up their belongings before leaving the coffee shop with the boy trailing behind them.

“You have to admit it, though,” he said, facing the shaking shoulders of his friend again. “You have a certain talent for giving people something to gossip about.”

He placed a hand on his upper arm, giving it a light squeeze.

“Go home and get some sleep now, Gomez.”

The feverish heat of the young man’s body made his palm prickle with delight, and he let his hand linger for a while before letting go.

As he unlocks the door leading to the dark hall of his mansion, Damian cannot help but wonder if things could have gone in a different direction if he only had let his heart guide him that afternoon in the coffee shop. Could he, by any chance have been the harbour to the lost ship that was Gomez that day? His intuition told him Gomez was a women only man, but he did not know it for sure. He had, after all, never asked him. Besides, women had never done his friend any good. If he had played his cards right, he could have convinced the confused young man that he was what he needed. Their friendship could have grown into something even stronger and more passionate, and,—Damian thought as he once again recalled the heavenly sight of Gomez’s naked body— something way more satisfying for both of them.

He had been such a coward. He hated to admit it to himself, but it was true. Instead of taking Gomez home with him, as he should have done, he had left him alone and in tears.

And now the raven-haired bitch had taken the place in Gomez’s heart that should have been his. A girl from the lower classes, marrying his friend for his name and his money. How long would it take, Damian wondered, before he saw her for what she really was? Had she not tempted him, that unfaithful little whore, while her poor husband was sick? He was probably not the only man she had disgraced herself with after she became Mrs Addams. 

Desperate to numb his heartache, Damian descends the stairs to the basement where he keeps his exercise equipment. In the middle of the room, there is an iron horse with two ropes tied to it. He grabs the ropes and pulls it from wall to wall, again and again until every muscle in his well-trained body are burning with the pain of overexertion. Yet the gnawing sensation in his chest will not be soothed. Dripping with sweat, Damian drops the ropes. Then he lets out a groan of agony and punches his fist through the drywall.


End file.
